Homeopathy for Photophobia
As those of you who read my posts know, I'm keen on homeopathic remedies. I use BHI Migraine for my migraines and photophobia. It has 15 different remedies in each tablet, which is a savings over buying each one separately (as well as saving a lot of time in not taking so many separate ones).
Well, I made a discovery just yesterday. I also take the single remedy Arsenicum Alb, since it's for congestion and food poisoning, and it's one of my remedies for the times that my sinuses act up. Since I'm trying to give up my OTC allergy medicines, I've been using it more often. And all at once it hit me: my eyes felt better when I was taking it.
I checked over the ingredients in the BHI Migraine tablets, and saw Arsenicum listed among them. I probably had the first time I looked through the ingredients, but hadn't thought that much about it then. I got out my Materia Medica book (the homeopathy remedies "Bible"), checked on what it had under the "Eyes" section, and saw that it was for "intense photophobia." As that was shown in italics, I realized that it really was helping my photophobia. As well, it's for ciliary neuralgia, and the ciliary muscle is what dilation drops do, they paralyze it so that they can see inside the eye.
A note here: When my mother was in the cardiac unit for a while during the last few weeks of her life, the head nurse told her that a bright light should never be shined into a dilated eye. (I have yet to try to follow up on this with an online search, but evidently it is something which the ophthalmologists don't know, or just ignore.) And Mama had her cataracts done several years before mine, only her photophobia struck immediately after the surgery. Since she had had problems with the light before the surgery, and her lens had been darkish brown, we assumed that changing the lens had brought on the extra light sensitivity. Her pupils didn't stay dilated nearly so long as mine, but the pain and suffering she went through was exactly like what I later experienced. Thus my helping her deal with the pain (buying her hats, sunglasses, putting tinted film on her storm door and windows, changing out her CFL bulbs for LED ones, etc.) helped me with my own suffering when the photophobia and resultant migraines began.
So I called in an order to Washington Homeopathics this a.m. after checking their site, http://www.homeopathyworks.com, for the Arsenicum Alb. While they no longer list the 4 oz. size, the do have the 2 oz. size available, but it's more expensive, $17-something instead of $27-something for the 4 oz. But I asked about the 4 oz. and was told that they still had some, and in the size-15 pellets (supposedly over 80,000 pellets in a 4 oz. bottle, which means that a 4 oz. bottle contains 20,000 doses), which I was able to get at the old price. I'm taking these along with the BHI Migraine, and it's working quite well.
Not that I'm halting any of my tried-and-true methods of blocking out the light. I'm still wearing my hats and sunglasses, and being aware of any glare and doing what I can (or what my husband can, as he's the handyman around here; I'm just his assistant) to keep excess light out of my eyes.
Any other discoveries I make on my path to lessening the effects of the migraines/photophobia will be posted on my blog. Self-help is a big thing in my life, and is much cheaper and healthier than any doctor can prescribe. Although, it seems that eye specialists are denying that they hadn't heard anything about the condition which can develop during an eye exam (my doctor's words almost verbatim), or that they don't know what causes it and that it shouldn't cause any problems (from www.healthboards.com/boards/eye-vision/390740-pupil-dilation-after-cataract-surgery.html). If light hurts the eyes, it's a problem, as it causes pain, suffering, and anxiety as to the next time the light is bright, how to escape the light, and how long the resulting exposure to the light will cause the eyes and head to hurt.
On the plus side: I'm improving on an almost daily basis. While homeopathic remedies might not "cure" problems, they do lessen the effects of what they're being taken to relieve. Which, really, is only what OTC or prescription drugs do. But homeopathic remedies can also help the body "repair" itself naturally, and without any "side effects." The best kind of medicine, to my way of thinking.